


Three and Three Again

by grainjew



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: (this fic was also brought to you by fun gender headcanons shoved in partway through), 3 Sentence Fiction, Agender Link, Ficlet Collection, Gen, I tried to keep this equal across all the games but, I'm pretty sure it's obvious that wind waker is my favorite, Pangender Ganondorf, Reincarnation, This Fic Was Brought To You By The Number 3, Weird Temporal Fuckery (its zelda what were you expecting), because of u know the reincarnation thing. and also botw, genderfluid Zelda, memory fuckery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 23:13:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17069009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grainjew/pseuds/grainjew
Summary: Eighty-one sentences for the Hero, the Princess, the Evil, and the cycle they repeat.





	Three and Three Again

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this a good two and a half years ago, definitely before botw came out, and then got distracted before I could finish and post it and didn't get Zelda-related fic focus back till now, to finish it, I'm so glad it's finally done haha

1.

Tetra remembers suddenly, the Triforce on her hand blazing with a light that should be blinding but isn't. Lifetime upon lifetime reveals itself like opening a door she hadn't known was closed, and always, Link is there.

Always, Ganondorf is there.

 

2.

As Zelda plays the Song of Time to send him back to his childhood, he can feel the timeline split with the senses he has honed since he first felt the touch of destiny, a sort of shiver across his soul. Yet this split does not rip through him with force enough to drive him to his knees, unlike when it happened during the battle, when feeling himself die in another timeline nearly distracted him enough do the same in this one. Instead, now, Zelda is here, fearlessly soothing the jagged edges of Time with the echoes of an ocarina and a hand gentle with power.

 

3.

They have been best friends, siblings, lovers, the two of them, but they have never been enemies, not truly. Even when neither of them remember yet, they are bonded by the trust of centuries, a relationship stretching back and forwards through time. The consistency of it is comforting.

 

4.

There are other constants, too, not so consistent as the three of them but recurring enough to take note of. The Master Sword fits perfectly into Link's hands every time he draws it, as though it was made for him (because it was tempered by him), Zelda falls asleep to a time-worn lullaby and hears it play in her dreams, whispering secrets, Demise's hatred is incarnated in a child of the desert, red-haired and resentful and ambitious. (Zelda and Link are constant, but Ganondorf in the form they know him flickers in and out of sight, alive for centuries at a time and then gone for cycles more.)

 

5.

Zelda says, "Sometimes I remember things that haven't happened yet."

Link says, "Me too."

In the future, the cycle repeats, and they remember forward.

 

6.

 _Here we go again,_  he thinks as his hand blazes and he feels himself changing shape. He doesn't have time to wonder at his own thoughts before he is plunged into pain, and then unconsciousness.

(Later, he realizes that he recognized the sensation.)

 

7.

Reliving the same three days over and over does not feel as strange as it should be, as strange as Tatl says it is, not with the timeless cycle he has-lived is-living will-live always present at the back of his mind. He is aware, now, of the three branches of the greater timeline as well as the tens of iterations of this world he has terminated (actually terminated, three days erased for everyone but him and Tatl, not simply split off like he experienced before). He misses Zelda, and even Ganondorf, foreign an idea as that is—but he is in a foreign land, now, and the Moon knows nothing of destiny.

 

8.

In some lifetimes, the memories come all at once, clearly and brightly, or in fragments, bits of dreams and sudden remembrance, and sometimes they are only a blur of instinct and strange recollection, shadowy and indistinct. Those are the worst cycles, Zelda concludes, feeling the absence acutely, always wondering at the thoughts half-shrouded, just out of reach. She chases after wisps of memory, and feels them disintegrate in her grasp.

 

9.

Aryll wakes him from a nightmare that feels more like a memory, and he needs her to remind him of his own birthday, too caught in the recollection of Kakariko (where is that?) burning to remember who he is (no, he knows exactly who he is).

The clothes his Grandma gives him for his birthday feel strangely familiar to him, strangely _right_ in a way that he associates with a sword in his hand (but he has almost never held a sword), the weight and balance and feel of something he knows so well as to be a part of him.

He collects the final piece of the shattered Triforce of Courage, and everything in him clicks into place.

 

10.

"Why do you still fight?" asks Ganondorf, the tip of the Master Sword burning at his throat. "The cycle repeats itself over and again--why do you simply play your part?"

Link says, "Are you not doing the same thing?"

 

11.

Wisdom suffuses her being, and she is fluid, touching on a gender and another but never staying, experiencing them all and learning what they have to teach.

Power burns inside of him, and he is all genders, his shadow stretching over the whole of the world and encompassing it all, taking everything in and accepting all its gifts.

Courage is the core of his spirit, the fiber of him, and he has no gender, does not need one to complete his task and survive the terrors ahead, his soul singing like steel.

 

12.

The child in green grins up at the older youth, getting an overwhelming sense of _redness_ , and says, "Let's be friends!"

"I'm not sure that's possible, Link," answers the youth, fingers to his temples, "We never have before, we are meant to fight, to—"

"You’re stronger than the hatred," says the child, suddenly serious, then he grins again and adds, "Plus, the Golden Goddesses were friends, weren't they?"

 

13.

Zelda is used to being possessed. What her possessors never seem to expect is that, while she pities Link for having to fight her body, detaching her mind from the need to control that cumbersome form lets her truly reap the benefits of Wisdom. Knowledge and memories and plans flood through her, and unhinged from earthly cares she begins to strategize.

 

14.

"Gan, Link, you cheaters!" laughs Zelda, nine years old and breathless, face red from the race she's just lost to her two best friends.

Ganondorf, age thirteen and therefore Too Old To Play Games, Technically, grins back at her and says, "Not my fault you're wearing that fancy floor-length dress, _Zel_ da—aren't you Wisdom?"

"I think I know how we end up killing each other this time around," says Zelda.

 

15.

Link thinks, facing Malladus, that really he can't wait for Demise's hatred to incarnate as Ganondorf again. The memories always come slower when the hatred is someone unfamiliar, and they are cloudier too--Malladus hardly seemed to recognize them.

It was a rare treat to be able to adventure _with_ Zelda rather than _for_ her, though.

 

16.

Demise dooms them to eternity and suddenly Link's mind is flashing forward, forward, forward, life and death tinted all in green. He knows that Demise's curse stands true, felt it in the core of him almost before Demise even spoke. Vision after vision of the world in ruin is confirmation he never needed.

 

17.

Those rare cycles when they are a triad united are not free of conflict. Other threats come, the hatred taking other forms even as Ganondorf tries his hardest to deny it its will. And still they stand against it.

 

18.

He saves the Oracle of Seasons, and feels a certain kinship with her, as though she is a distant cousin of the sister of his soul. It is the same with the Oracle of Ages, an echo of his memories.

And then Ganondorf is resurrected, and he feels that same kinship, that same recognition, only multiplied a thousandfold, and in the back of his head he mourns for his enemy, and the mindless form this botched ritual has forced him into.

 

19.

Impa’s appearances are sporadic, unpredictable except in that she is always devoted to Zelda. She has tied herself only loosely to their cycle, which lets her incarnate herself only when she is needed, only when she must protect.

She never remembers.

 

20.

When Link remembers Fi, he stares the sword, spreads it across his lap, and simply sits for hours, caught in memory.

“I miss you,” he says at last.

He never mentions the incident again.

 

21.

Green—emerald-green, forest-green, Courage-green—the green of fabric, a weave torn and bloodied and worn; green and the blue of space and sea and Wisdom, silky and complex and embroidered with stories; green and blue and red like the heart of the sun, like the drip of blood from a wound, like the warmth of Power, red veiling and red metal and ruby-red gemstones.

Green and blue and red, the colors of the Goddesses, the colors of the Triforce, split and drawn to itself.

Colors all shot through with threads of gold.

 

22.

Ganondorf doesn’t really remember, the first time. It is only when he sees the Kokiri boy take up the Master Sword and open the portal to the Sacred Realm that he feels a flicker of recognition. In the next seven years, echoes of other times fill his mind so near to bursting he can hardly keep his own shape— until, injured and full of Power and dodging the quick sword-strikes of the Hero, he can’t anymore.

 

23.

It is always strange to be four people. The thought occurs to all four versions of Link at once in the same way that so many thoughts seem to—they are still the same person, after all, and they share the same memories, even if their self is currently split in four. They still share the same soul, and the same unbreakable spirit; they are still, all four of them, Link.

 

24.

His hat can talk.

Forward, there is a boat that talks; backwards, a sword; all around him, unbelievable things.

His hat talking should really not be this strange.

 

25.

Link awakens from a hundred years of sleep, and— he can't remember. He can't remember.

He can't _remember._

 

26.

Dark worlds, always dark worlds, refractions, reflections, Zelda, Hilda, Midna, Zelda, Hyrule and Lorule, twilight and dawn. The same story, playing out again and again, power sealed and unsealed in the past and the future and realities one step to the side, all the wisdom in the world unable to rewrite an ancient curse, futile courage.

Zelda places a hand on the Triforce, full and shining, and like so many before and so many after, so many images repeated across the top of Time's reflecting pool, light refracted from mirrors and prisms across a span of eternity, she _wishes_.

 

27.

Wisdom, and courage, and power; power, and wisdom, and courage; courage, and power, and wisdom. A dance, ragged, sincere, to the music of so many different instruments called to unison by the wave of a conductor’s baton, echoing across eons in a flurry of practiced steps.

And there is no need to fear death when your next lifetime is already spreading its roots before you.

**Author's Note:**

> gjdhfkdjf I need to get to know the 2d games better please picture me frantically looking up plot summaries on the wiki at 2 am . 
> 
> Also Skyward Sword is still the shiny new Zelda game to me bc that's when I was first and most intensely special interesting in the series so Link Between Worlds and Breath of the Wild basically don't exist to me at all lmao


End file.
